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Irish PEN is deeply saddened by the passing of Eavan Boland. One of Ireland’s greatest poets, Eavan had been selected as the recipient of the 2019 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature.

She was due to receive this award on the 22nd March of this year, surrounded by her peers and admirers. We should have had the opportunity to celebrate her in person, to acknowledge her achievements both as a poet and fearless champion of women writers. But Covid19 intervened and the Award event had to be postponed. We planned that our Irish PEN celebration would instead take place to coincide with Eavan’s forthcoming publication, The Historians, scheduled for September 2020. (WW Norton and Carcanet Press) Her untimely death is a source of deep sadness to us all and we offer our sincere condolences to her family, friends and colleagues around the world.

Eavan Boland was the recipient of numerous accolades throughout her long career, among them a Lannan Foundation Award, the PEN Award for creative non-fiction for A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, the Corrington Medal for Literary Excellence and the Bucknell Medal of Distinction. She held honorary degrees from, among others, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, and Strathclyde University Scotland. In 2016, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2017, she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy.

Those who knew Eavan Boland personally speak of a brilliant teacher, a rigorous one.

Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, playwright, short story writer and novelist, remembers the workshops that Eavan Boland facilitated in the mid-1980s. She remembers her as brave, outspoken, passionate. ‘She was also intelligent enough, confident enough, and articulate enough to promote the idea that women should write poetry and literature. In her own poetry, she was revolutionary: she wrote about her domestic and maternal life and confirmed that feeding a baby, putting out milk bottles, living ‘in the suburbs’ could be the stuff of poetry.’

Lia Mills – novelist, short story writer, essayist – remembers A Kind of Scar: The Woman Poet in a National Tradition. ‘One of the seminal LIP pamphlets published by Attic press in the 1980s [in which] Boland challenges some of the sacred cows of Irish poetry using her own experience as a lens. It was a daring, radical thing to write and it predates by a long shot the explosion of fine personal essay and memoir writing that Irish literature enjoys now.’ Lia Mills also recalls the way Eavan Boland ‘had a way of drilling deeper into the core of words and shifting our angle of perception. These shifts were not always comfortable, but they were effective. She had such a strong mind.’

Eavan Boland loved teaching. She believed that workshops ‘generated oxygen’ – literary oxygen. According to Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, Eavan loved to quote an anonymous workshop participant, a woman, who declared: ‘If they knew I wrote poetry people would think I didn’t wash my windows.’ In so many ways, Eavan Boland ‘was the champion of women in the home, of women who longed to be poets and writers, but were hemmed in by society. Locked down in domesticity.’

Trailblazing. Daring. Committed. Fearless. Eavan Boland was not afraid to excoriate the editors of Field Day in the late 1980s, those who ‘forgot’ to include so many Irish women in their Anthology of Irish writing. Eavan herself was included – but that did not stop her protesting angrily at the exclusion of her female peers.

Mary Robinson recently spoke of Eavan Boland, her close friend, as a very ‘practical’ poet, one who knew, even early on, how to use a computer. In contrast, Mary Robinson was, she said, the ‘dreamy lawyer’.

Liz McManus remembers, in particular, the poem Our Future Will Become the Past of Other Women, written by Eavan Boland to celebrate 100 years of women’s suffrage in Ireland. Eavan read her poem at a special event at the UN, organised by the Permanent Representative of Ireland to the UN, Geraldine Byrne Nason, MRIA. Liz McManus also recalls that ‘Eavan Boland’s workshops in the mid 1980s were the springboard for the formation of WEB, possibly the longest-lasting women’s writing group in Ireland.’

Maria McManus, a poet from the north of Ireland, expresses for all of us that which we have lost in Eavan Boland’s passing, and all that we have gained from her life among us and her work: ‘We will receive sustenance from the work of Eavan Boland for a long time yet to come. The ‘long tail’ of her work and the resultant gift to us, is that she shared the deep truths of ‘dailiness’ – an unflinching intelligence of the relational, an acute eye on the tyranny of the insular and the colonial, and the richness of the every-day. We see ourselves more clearly, we are better people and we are more daring because of her.’

The Irish Freedom to Write campaign and Irish PEN believe that Oleg Sentsov was imprisoned solely because of his opposition to Russia’s occupation and illegal ‘annexation’ of Crimea. We call on the Russian authorities to release him immediately and to respect Oleg Sentsov’s human rights, including the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, and his right to medical attention.

We further call on the Russian Authorities to free all who are held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and to return all Ukrainian nationals who are currently held in Russia to Ukraine, as required by international law.

International Pen have designated the 15th of November as the Day of the Imprisoned Writer and are highlighting the plight of five writers currently imprisoned for their writings. I’m contacting you on behalf of the Irish Pen/WORD Freedom to Write Campaign.

We have decided to highlight the plight of Ukrainian writer and filmmaker, Oleg Sentsov. Oleg is serving a 20-year prison sentence on ‘terrorism’ charges after a trial by a Russian military court, marred by allegations of torture. He is currently being held in the ‘Polar Bear’ penal colony of Labytnangi, in Siberia, thousands of kilometres away from his home and family in Crimea. He recently spent 145 days on hunger strike, calling for the release of all Ukrainian prisoners imprisoned in Russia on politically motivated grounds. He ended his strike on 6 October 2018 as he feared being forced-fed.

Freedom to Write intend sending appeals to the Russian authorities urging them to:

Release Oleg Sentsov immediately;

Respect Oleg Sentsov’s human rights, including the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and his right to medical attention;

Return all Ukrainian nationals arrested in Crimea and now held in Russia to Ukraine, as required by international law, and free all held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression.

We are anxious to include as many signatures as possible in our petition which reads:

The Irish Freedom to Write campaign and Irish Pen believe that Oleg Sentsov was imprisoned solely because of his opposition to Russia’s occupation and illegal ‘annexation’ of Crimea. We call on the Russian authorities to release him immediately and to respect Oleg Sentsov’s human rights, including the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, and his right to medical attention.

We further call on the Russian Authorities to free all who are held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and to return all Ukrainian nationals who are currently held in Russia to Ukraine, as required by international law.

Signed :

June Considine Freedom to Write/WORD

Frank Geary Freedom to Write/Irish PEN

Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin Chair Irish PEN

Signatures will be needed by Tues 13th November 2018. Our appeal will be forwarded to:

President of the Russian Federation,

Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation

Human Rights Ombudsman of the Russian Federation

The Russian Embassy

Further information on the plight of Oleg Sentsov is available below in the PEN International appeal.

PEN International Appeal

Day of the Imprisoned Writer 2018 TAKE ACTION FOR OLEG SENTSOV RUSSIA

Writer, filmmaker

Ukrainian writer and filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, is serving a 20-year prison sentence on spurious terrorism charges after a grossly unfair trial by a Russian military court, marred by allegations of torture. He is currently being held in the ‘Polar Bear’ penal colony of Labytnangi, in Siberia, thousands of kilometres away from his home and family in Crimea. He recently spent 145 days on hunger strike, calling for the release of all Ukrainian prisoners imprisoned in Russia on politically motivated grounds. He ended his strike on 6 October 2018 as he feared being forced-fed.

PEN International believes that Oleg Sentsov was imprisoned for his opposition to Russia’s occupation and illegal ‘annexation’ of Crimea and calls on the Russian authorities to release him immediately. The organisation further calls on the Russian authorities to respect Oleg Sentsov’s human rights, including the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment, and his right to medical attention.

Take Action – Share on Twitter, Facebook and other social media

Please send appeals to the Russian authorities urging them to:

Release Oleg Sentsov immediately;

Respect Oleg Sentsov’s human rights, including the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and his right to medical attention;

Return all Ukrainian nationals arrested in Crimea and now held in Russia to Ukraine, as required by international law, and free all held solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression.

We also encourage you to reach out to your Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic representatives in Russia, calling on them to raise Oleg Sentsov’s case in bilateral fora.

Send a message of support

The amount of support Oleg Sentsov received during his hunger strike was staggering. We are grateful to everyone who sent him messages of solidarity and would like to encourage you to keep writing to him. After this hunger strike, and the toll it has taken on his health, we are sure he needs our support now more than ever.

Please note that all messages need to be written in Russian. If you do not speak Russian, please find a sample message below:

Dear Oleg, I wish you good health and strength and hope that you will soon be released. We are all thinking of you and stand with you in solidarity and respect.

Oleg Sentsov’s hunger strike brought considerable attention to his plight and we would like to thank everyone who took action on his case. In order to keep up the momentum, we encourage PEN members to continue to:

Publish articles and opinion pieces in your national or local press highlighting the case of Oleg Sentsov;

Please let us know about your activities and send us reports about the actions you take. This is really important as it means we can monitor the impact that our campaigning has in relation to Oleg Sentsov’s case.

Social Media: Please use the hashtags #ImprisonedWriter and #FreeSentsov

Share information about Oleg Sentsov and your campaigning activities for him via social media.

Suggested tweets:

.@PutinRF_Eng, Oleg Sentsov should have never spent a single day behind bars. Release him immediately #FreeSentsov #ImprisonedWriter

On Day of the #ImprisonedWriter join PEN and take action for imprisoned writer & filmmaker Oleg Sentsov #FreeSentsov {insert RAN link}

Ukrainian writer and filmmaker Oleg Sentsov took part in the EuroMaidan demonstrations that toppled former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. He helped deliver food to Ukrainian soldiers following Russia’s occupation and ‘annexation’ of Crimea in March 2014. He said he was arrested by the Russian security services at his apartment in Crimea on 10 May 2014. He reported being subjected to a brutal three-hour ordeal involving beatings, suffocation and threats of sexual assault.

His arrest was officially recorded on 11 May 2014 on the grounds of ‘suspicion of plotting terrorist acts’ and membership of a terrorist group – the Ukrainian right-wing group Pravyi Sektor (Right Sector). He was taken to Russia on 23 May 2014 where he spent over a year in pre-trial detention. He was eventually charged with the establishment of a terrorist group, politically motivated arson and conspiring to blow up a statue of Lenin, all of which he denied.

Following a trial widely condemned outside of Russia, in which a key prosecution witness retracted his statement, saying it had been extracted under torture, Oleg Sentsov was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison by the military court of Rostov-on-Don on 20 August 2015. His sentence was upheld on appeal on 24 November 2015. In October 2016, the Russian authorities denied a request for extradition to Ukraine on the grounds that he had become a Russian citizen following Russia’s occupation and ‘annexation’ of Crimea.

Oleg Sentsov began a hunger strike on 14 May 2018 to urge the Russian authorities to release all Ukrainian nationals currently imprisoned in Russia on politically motivated grounds. He was taken to intensive care on 15 June 2018. His heart and kidney problems considerably worsened and he was put on a glucose drip. In August 2018, he told his family that he had been denied access to letters and had been kept in ‘an information vacuum’. The prison authorities subsequently granted him access to correspondence following an international outcry. On 5 October 2018, he wrote a letter stating that he felt compelled to end his hunger strike as he feared being forced-fed. He said he had lost 20 kilos and suffered irreparable damages to his health.

For more information about the state of freedom of expression in Russia, please see PEN International, PEN Moscow and St Petersburg PENs joint report entitled Russia’s Strident Stifling of Free Speech 2012-2018. The report, published in October 2018 in both English and Russian, shows how Russia’s array of repressive laws severely restricts the rights to freedom of expression, opinion and information. It describes the deterioration of media freedom through the Russian authorities’ control of the media landscape and the immense pressure faced by independent journalists to not contradict the official line or provide coverage of critical viewpoints. It analyses the prosecution and conviction of several people on politically motivated grounds. It further shows how artistic freedom and literature are under threat.

The following letter was published simultaneously in newspapers across the world on Monday 16th April 2018, six months after the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. This action was co-ordinated by International PEN, an organisation that celebrates literature and defends freedom of expression globally.

As part of the Freedom to Write Campaign, Irish PEN and WORD were in full support of this initiative and gathered the signatories below. The letter appeared in The Irish Independent on 16th April.

16 April 2018

The Shame of Valletta 2018, European Capital of Culture

Dear President Juncker,

Dear Commissioner Timmermans,

Dear Mr Magnier, Director of Creative Europe,

CC/ Commissioner Vella,

We write to you on the six-month anniversary of the brutal assassination of our colleague, Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta’s foremost investigative journalist, to express our profound concern with developments in Malta in the context of the investigation into her assassination, and in particular regarding the behaviour of the management of Valletta 2018, the European Capital of Culture.

The assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia was ordered in direct response to her journalistic work in exposing rampant government corruption at the heart of the EU. Since her death, we have witnessed with horror the repeated and aggressive destruction of the memorial to Daphne Caruana Galizia in Valletta, which was created in response to this horrific event. The Maltese authorities have not attempted to protect this memorial. In particular, we are outraged by the comments of Jason Micallef, Chairman of the Valletta 2018 Foundation, and as such the Capital of Culture’s official representative in Malta. Since her assassination, Micallef has repeatedly and publicly attacked and ridiculed Daphne Caruana Galizia on social media, ordered the removal of banners calling for justice for her death and called for her temporary memorial to be cleared. This is far from appropriate behaviour for an official designated to represent the European Capital of Culture, and in fact serves to further the interests of those trying to prevent an effective and impartial investigation into Caruana Galizia’s death.

Creative Europe’s mandate is the support and promotion of culture and media in the region. European culture includes the freedom to criticise, satirise and investigate those in power. The role of the Chairman of the European Capital of Culture should be to safeguard this right, not to threaten it. We believe this behaviour completely demeans the role and has profound implications for the integrity of the programme as a whole. There can be no tolerance for the ridiculing of the assassination of a journalist in the heart of the EU, especially from the very authorities entrusted to promote the EU’s media and culture. We therefore urge you to immediately investigate these allegations against Jason Micallef. If found to be true, we urge you to call for his resignation and for the appointment of a qualified individual who demonstrates the requisite integrity for this role.

Further to these specific concerns relating to Valletta 2018, we wish to restate our broader fears relating to the ongoing investigation by the Maltese Authorities into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, which we believe does not meet the standards of independence, impartiality and effectiveness required under international human rights law. The very same individuals Caruana Galizia was investigating remain in charge of securing justice in her case, despite a judicial challenge in Malta’s constitutional court from her family, who has now been completely shut out of the assassination investigation. We therefore welcome the initiative of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, which is taking the extraordinary step of sending a special rapporteur to scrutinise the investigation.

It is also of enormous concern to us that, even after her assassination, senior government officials, including the Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, are insisting on trying thirty-four libel cases against her, which have now been assumed by her family. In addition to these cases, the Prime Minister is taking a further libel case against Caruana Galizia’s son, Matthew, himself a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist. We have reason to believe that these proceedings are in direct reprisal for his mother’s work in investigating corruption within the current Maltese government. The Prime Minister is currently compelling Matthew to return to Malta to stand trial, despite independent security experts advising Matthew to remain outside Malta due to substantial threats to his life there.

Whistle-blower Maria Efimova, who was one of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s sources on corruption within the disgraced Malta-based Pilatus Bank is facing extradition to Malta from Greece after a European arrest warrant was issued. We believe the charges against Efimova to be purely political and are deeply concerned about both her safety and the independence of the legal process she would face should she be deported to Malta.

We urge you to take a stand in support of calls for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia and for the protection of journalists in Malta.

We look forward to your response outlining the steps you will now take relating to our concerns.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Clement, President, PEN International

Per Wästburg, PEN President Emeritus, Chair of the Nobel Prize for Literature

(and representatives of PEN centres in more than 30 countries, see below)

President Higgins is the Patron of the Irish Writers Centre and he has put the promotion of creativity, critical thought and the careful use of language at the heart of his Presidency.

Meeting members of Irish PEN, Word and the Irish Writers Centre at Áras an Uachtaráin on 27th March 2018, President Higgins marked the launch of WORD and Irish PEN’s initiative to support International PENs Freedom to Write Campaign.

Freedom of expression and solidarity among writers are at the heart of PEN. PEN started in the aftermath of World War One bringing writers together to express solidarity within and between recently warring nations. PEN quickly expressed this same solidarity by campaigning for freedom of expression for all writers and for individual writers who were silenced, harassed, imprisoned and murdered because they had the courage to write.

As a group we are planning to take one action for each season during the coming year. These will be linked to other events such as the Nollaig na MBan in January, the PEN Dinner Empty Chair, the Day of the Imprisoned Writer in November and PEN International global actions. We will follow up with actions and updates on cases, but for this quarter we are focussing on, in particular Zehra Dogan and Raif Badawi.